Skip to main content

Scott Keogh Takes Over Top Spot at VW USA from Woebcken

Audi of America head, Scott Keogh is being promoted to president and CEO of the Volkswagen Group of America. He replaces Hinrich Woebcken, who will stay with the company as an advisor.

Keogh joined Audi in 2006 as chief marketing officer. In that position, he led a remarkable turnaround in market awareness and brand strength and that saw the R8 become Iron Man’s car.

In 2012, Keogh took over as president of Audi of America. In that time, Audi went on a record streak of growth, setting personal sales records every month for more than 90 months. That streak was not affected by Dieselgate and continues to this day.

Woebcken, though, has not been without successes of his own at VW. He was the first choice to lead the newly minted North American Region after Dieselgate and oversaw the market introduction of the new Atlas and Tiguan. Both cars have been sales successes and have played no small part in buoying the company’s sales figures after the disappearance of VW’s popular TDI cars and the market-wide slump in sedans and hatchbacks.

“Hinrich J. Woebcken has brought the Volkswagen brand back on track for success in the U.S. and the North American region,” said Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen AG. “Considering the challenging conditions, these achievements deserve my dedicated recognition.”

Diess’s own position within the company may bear some significance here. The CEO recently took over from the not unsuccessful Matthias Mueller. Despite righting the ship after Dieselgate and creating Strategy 2025 (the strategy which sees VW aggressively pursuing mass market EV superiority), Mueller failed to sell off VW’s unnecessary assets and simplify the enormous empire. That is widely seen as the reason for his replacement.

Similarly, despite Woebcken’s successes, VW still occupies a tenuous position in America and signs of accelerating sales are few and far between.

“After the successful comeback of the Volkswagen brand, Scott Keogh, who led Audi to excellence in the U.S., will build upon the momentum and implement the next stage in the growth strategy as we continue to develop Volkswagen into a more relevant player in North America,“ said Diess.

After Keogh leaves Audi on November 1, he will be replaced by Mark Del Rosso. Del Rosso is Audi’s former COO and current CEO of Bentley USA. He will join Audi on December 1. No successor has been named at Bentley.

The decision follows last week’s announcement that VW’s Chief Engineering Officer, Mattias Erb, was headed back to Wolfsburg to be replaced by Wolfgang Demmelbauer-Ebner

The post Scott Keogh Takes Over Top Spot at VW USA from Woebcken appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2ybjF8i
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch: The Zerouno Cruis’n USA

ItalDesign is drumming up excitement for its new supercar based around the same 5.2-liter Audi V10 that powers the R8. Naturally, it hit the road for a cruise around California last week to celebrate Monterey Car Week. There isn’t much in the way of V10 noise—which is a real shame given the sound it makes—but you do at least get a good look at the car inside and out in this video. With a body made entirely of carbon fiber and designed to be as aerodynamic and light as possible, ItalDesign figures that it will be good for a 0-60 time of just 3.2 seconds. “We put it our best skills into the production of the first car,” said Massimo Bovi, head of pre-series production, when the Zerouno was first unveiled in Geneva earlier this year. “Using some of the finest productions methods and engaging our high-skilled workers.” The car features clever aero tricks gleaned from single-seat racing, like a y-duct up front to improve downforce and turn-in. Available in a number of trim levels, the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Golf GTE Wins Top Honor at the 2015 Business Techies Awards

Golf GTE wins Green category in the 2015 BusinessCar Fleet Technology awards Judges praised the Golf GTE for its performance, ease of use and economy Golf GTE launched earlier this year with plug-in hybrid technology – priced from £33,755 204 PS performance combined with CO 2  emissions of just 39 g/km Volkswagen has added to its growing list of 2015 automotive industry accolades by winning the Green category in the annual BusinessCar Fleet Technology Awards – the Techies. The prestigious title was awarded to Volkswagen for the Golf GTE, an innovative plug-in hybrid that combines sporty dynamics with exceptional fuel economy and low CO 2  emissions. Now in their seventh year, the Techies are judged by both BusinessCar’s experienced editorial panel with help from TRL’s technology expert. The industry’s only technology-specific awards, the BusinessCar Techies reward the use of technology to make business car fleet operations easier, cheaper, cleaner, safer and more straig...
Post a Comment
Read more